Yale Lecturer Resigns After Email on Halloween Costumes

A Yale lecturer who came under attack for challenging students to stand up for their right to decide what Halloween costumes to wear, even to the point of being offensive, has resigned from teaching at the college, the university said Monday.

The lecturer, Erika Christakis, an expert in early childhood education, wrote an email in October suggesting that there could be negative consequences to students ceding “implied control” over Halloween costumes to institutional forces. “I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious,” she wrote, “a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”

She wrote the email in response to a directive from the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale that warned students that it would be insensitive to wear costumes that symbolized cultural appropriation or misrepresentation, or both, like feathered headdresses, turbans, war paint, blackface or redface, or costumes that made fun of people.

Ms. Christakis has made a “voluntary decision not to teach in the future,” according to a statement from the university on Monday. Her husband, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and a professor of sociology at Yale, will take a one-semester sabbatical, the university said. The statement said the administration hoped Ms. Christakis would reconsider.

“Erika Christakis is a well-regarded instructor, and the university’s leadership is disappointed that she has chosen not to continue teaching in the spring semester,” the statement said. “Her teaching is highly valued and she is welcome to resume teaching anytime at Yale, where freedom of expression and academic inquiry are the paramount principle and practice.”

Ms. Christakis’s email, combined with an overheard “white girls only” remark at a fraternity party, helped touch off protests over racial insensitivity at Yale, as well as a debate over whether the protests and efforts to legislate forms of expression like Halloween costumes were making students and faculty afraid to speak out if they disagreed.

After the email, a group of students confronted Dr. Christakis. One student was shown in a video posted on YouTube confronting Dr. Christakis as he clasped his hands. “It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not!” the student was heard yelling. “Do you understand that? It is about creating a home here!”

Dr. Christakis is the master of Silliman College, an undergraduate residence at Yale, and his wife is associate master. They will continue in those posts, the university said. The Christakises did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Yale Lecturer Resigns After Email on Costumes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe